


A Place to Think (but also, a place to get yelled at)

by BuzzCat



Category: Gravity Falls
Genre: Gen, Post-Series, Post-Weirdmageddon, Yelling, and Ford is kind of where that anger goes because he. y'know. almost got them killed., and frankly got her turned into a tapestry which also isn't Fun, the summary sounds silly but honestly I feel that post-series Wendy is just. Really Dang Angry.
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2021-01-19
Updated: 2021-01-19
Packaged: 2021-03-17 17:27:32
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,331
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28852797
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/BuzzCat/pseuds/BuzzCat
Summary: Ford goes to the roof to sit and think. Wendy is also sitting on the roof to sit and think. Turns out, post-Weirdmageddon Wendy has got some Anger and some Yelling that she saved just for Ford. Ford, for the record, is sort of defensive about it, but mostly just baffled that he's being yelled at by an ax-wielding teenager.
Relationships: Wendy Corduroy & Ford Pines
Comments: 4
Kudos: 18





	A Place to Think (but also, a place to get yelled at)

Ford pushed open the hatch on the roof, the Oregon air feeling fresh in his lungs. It wasn’t autumn, not yet, but they were close, and he could feel it in the air. Bill was gone, Stan had his memories back, the kids had gone back to Piedmont only a few days ago. The house still felt empty without them. Ford, in their absence, had started trying to repair his old house. Repairing what was broken (everything), rebuilding what he could (if he was lucky, everything). Stan was in town, reveling in the hero worship and making sure his memories were cemented enough to place faces. The house was a mess, but it was empty. But Ford still hadn’t been able to think, had still given in and retreated to the roof for someplace quiet to think. Someplace that didn’t feel soaked in memories of what had been his, evidence of what his brother had built instead, just someplace neutral.

But apparently, someone had already found the place.

The hatch on the roof led to a small plateau, barely large enough for two folding chairs and a cooler. The girl from the zodiac—ice— sat in one of the chairs, the redhead girl Stan had had working in the giftshop all summer. Ford couldn’t remember her name.

She turned when she heard the hatch, her hand going for the ax at her belt. The apocalypse had left its mark on all of them.

Ford started to close the hatch behind him. “Sorry, didn’t mean to disturb.”

But the girl relaxed, looking back out over the parking lot and endless pine trees. “Nah, it’s cool. It’s a good place to think.”

Ford meant to go back down the ladder, then paused. There really wasn’t a better place in the house to think, nothing more neutral than a roof he’d never set foot on. He could share the silence with a very quiet teenager if he had to.

Ford climbed out of the hatch, stepping forward to sit in the other lawn chair. The girl didn’t look away from the view as she reached down into the cooler and grabbed two cans of Pitt Cola, handing one to him and keeping the other for herself.

Ford cracked open the can, the hiss of air the only sound. The girl—Wendy, he seemed to remember someone calling her—didn’t open her can, instead picking at the pop tab with her nail so it made tinny tapping noises. Ford hazarded a glance over and her eyes were fixed on the horizon; he could have thrown his soda in her face and he doubted she’d have registered it.

“At the risk of intruding,” Wendy blinked like coming out of a trance, looking over at him as Ford continued, “are you alright?”

Wendy leaned back, “Psh, I’m totally fine dude. The world didn’t end, the sky didn’t fall, life’s a dream.” She finally opened her can and took a drink. “Still gotta go to high school though. Eurgh.”

“Eurgh indeed. But you seemed incredibly distracted, considering that life is ‘a dream’.”

Wendy rolled her eyes. “Look man, I know you don’t want to talk about it, I don’t want to talk about it. Let’s just enjoy the silence of two people who have nothing in common.” She picked up a pinecone and hurled it at the totem pole in the yard.

Ford frowned at the change in conversational temperature. “I’m sorry, did I offend you?”

“Not like, directly.”

“But indirectly?” Ford asked, irritated. He barely knew this girl, what could he possibly have done to warrant this much teenage indifference?

She was not making eye contact. “Indirectly, you just piss me off.”

“Doing what?” Wendy gave him a look, gesturing to the sky where only a week prior, a floating red X of a thousand colors had hovered and reigned down bizarre destruction. Ford flushed. “Ah. The kids told you the whole story then?” He’d hoped that was something that could stay between him and his family, but apparently not.

“All of it.” Wendy took a gulp of soda before looking over at him, something between contempt and disdain in her look. “But honestly, it isn’t even that. We all make dumb choices and have to live with them. You hurt those kids.”

The thought hit like a punch to the gut and Ford turned to Wendy, hurt and baffled. “I never hurt Dipper and Mabel.”

Wendy snorted. “You tried to separate them, man. They’re thirteen years old, this is just when kids start to need each other. Those kids can take on anything together, I’ve seen them do it, and you were going to make Dipper into some kind of mini-me and leave Mabel to go home alone. Do you even realize how cruel that is?”

Ford couldn’t meet her eye. It _was_ cruel. And she wasn’t wrong. All of it, she wasn’t wrong. He’d been about to try to separate the kids, make Dipper into the kind of scientist Ford had been—not what he’d become, but the kind he’d been when he was young and determined and so painfully alone—and send Mabel back to a world where no one had seen the sky split open full of nightmares, alone to a family who wouldn’t understand why trigonometry induced panic attacks, alone with her memories of how the world had ended.

“I didn’t—Dipper didn’t take the apprenticeship. They went home together. There’s nothing else there to discuss.”

“Oh there is _plenty_ to discuss. You—“ Wendy cut herself off. She stood up, throwing her half-empty can off the roof and far into the weeds. Gompers followed to pick it up. “I don’t need this. You hurt those kids, you hurt Stan, and the kind of shit you were messing with almost flattened this town. You never asked my opinion but I’m giving it to you, since apparently no one else is willing to mention that we almost died because you couldn’t stop correcting your brother for five seconds.”

“I don’t think you’re legally allowed to mention—”

“I’ve worked for Stan for two years, you think I care at all what’s ‘legally allowed’? No one wants to talk about it, no one will even _admit_ it, but I remember what happened and it was you hurting Stan and those kids. You erased your own brother’s memory—”

“I had to, it was the only way to defeat—”

“DON’T!” Wendy’s shout shook the birds from the trees. Ford blinked. He had also stood up at some point and when he looked down at Wendy, he saw she was shaking. She noticed it the same time as him and she clenched her first so tight Ford saw her knuckles turn bloodless white. She gritted her teeth, “Don’t say his name.”

They were silent. Wendy’s jaw was clenched tight, though from fear or anger Ford couldn’t tell. Ford was just silent because he didn’t know what to do. Nothing she said was wrong.

He tried again. “We had to defeat _him_ , and it was Stan’s idea—”

Something sparked in her eye and Ford fought the urge to take a step back. “It was Stan’s idea? It was Stan’s idea to—to die for his family, to protect everyone? Stan’s idea to give up everything for this town, for his family, for his brother?” Ford could hear Wendy’s teeth grinding as she said, “Stan is the most self-sacrificing person I fucking know, and he made that same choice every day for thirty years. You couldn’t make that choice _once_.”

Ford opened his mouth, despite the fact he didn’t even know what to say. But whatever he was going to say, it didn’t matter.

Wendy took a running jump off the roof, catching the tip of the pine tree and riding from one to the next until she landed on the ground, walking down the driveway.

Ford was left sitting on the rooftop, with plenty of time and space to think.

**Author's Note:**

> Fun fact: when I was first going to write this, it was going to be Wendy and Ford bonding over ace solidarity. It's even titled 'Aces Up Top' in my document. But somehow, 'bonding over being ace' turned into 'Wendy yells at Ford for three pages and would like to yell some more' (don't worry, I'll write a 'bonding over being ace' fic later. eventually. probably.)
> 
> (Second Fun Fact: This is the second fic I've written where the way Wendy copes with Post-Weirdmageddon is just. Yelling.)
> 
> Anyway, I do intend for there to be a second chapter, but I make no promises about when that will arrive. Subscribe so you can get that notification directly in your inbox when I remember this story exists in like six years.


End file.
